ahhhhh, ART

ATCs are a thing I've only recently discovered through the swaps forum at bpal.org. Small, cute, and swappable (not unlike imps), they make a fantastic wee project for people like me who have drawers full of craft scraps and a history of lust for miniatures (why yes, I did have a dollhouse growing up).

The first swap I participated in was seasonal-themed. Colours came out a bit wonky in this picture but here they are for the record:


To see what ATCs look like when a real artist tackles them, have a browse at Joumana Medlej's ATC gallery. (Seriously, you want to go and look.)

Last night I went to a gallery show by a co-worker of mine who's leaving the country in a few weeks. All of her photography, paintings, and 3-D collage boxes were available for donations and I was lucky enough to get some beautiful pieces of wall art and photographic prints, including this one:


Her RedBubble page is here and I'm sure she'd be happy if you went by for a browse.

after a long silence

Strange. Tough. Lonely without being alone.

It sinks in a little more each day that it's permanent and for real, that he's not the person I thought he was, and that nothing that could possibly happen in the future is going to change that.

The hardest part is wondering if I'm going to be alone forever - if that, screwed up as it was, is as good as it's ever going to be.

Currently listening to Nirvana and it suits.

finally!

This is the project I've been dying to post about for weeks, but couldn't do it since it was a surprise and I didn't want to spoil it for the recipient in case she came browsing through here. She's on her way to the post office to pick it up now, though, so I can finally show the scarf to the non-Ravelry world:


I love the fact that it's a delicate lacy pattern knitted up in a shocking lime green (which this picture doesn't quite do justice to!) Just the thing for all Victorian ravers. The pattern is by Violet Green and is available for free here. Give it a try if you like the look of it; it's easier than it seems and very exciting!

my latest obsession

Making these little things is such a nice meditative activity - and it takes about a billion to fill a jar, so there's no reason to stop.


And a close-up:

Orange lifts the spirit

So I have a real camera now! Sadly I have no manual and no inherent camera skills, so my blog is still going to be full of risible photography until I work out through trial and error what to do with it. This is a picture of the necklace I made for the bpal.org necklace swap:


Bugle beads and some twinkly Swarovskis stitched onto a bright orange ribbon with dangly bits. It was a present for a girl who really seriously liked orange, so it got me working outside of my usual colour range. I knew I was satisfied with it when I realised I was half-sad to be parting with it in spite of the fact that it's a colour I never wear!

I promise I haven't abandoned my blog

...In fact I've been dying to post almost all month, but, well, my major craft projects of late have all been presents for people who are likely to wander over and take a look here, so I haven't been able to post pictures or details for fear of spoiling surprises. I'll be back into the swing of things soon though.

I just finished reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Strange, dreamlike romance; memory and loss; a library and a forest. An extremely introspective book that was very easy to lose myself in, even on the crowded and noisy Kaohsiung subway.

I think I would like to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. There's been some nattering about them on the ADF mailing lists and they sound intriguing from a Pagan POV.

knit 'n purl kitchenware

Part of me feels like a huge dork for posting these, but people who think knitting is stupid aren't likely to be checking out this blog anyway, so here's the latest exciting news on my jazzing-up-the-kitchen activities:


I still can't quite believe I'm using this to wash dishes with, given how much time I put into it - not that it was difficult, just kind of involved. You can see the pattern here if you like. This is the work in progress:


The yarn I used was a wool/acrylic blend. Cotton would have made more sense but I couldn't find any suitable cotton yarn at my local shop and wanted to use these stupidly bright pinks anyway. It's a bit weird - kind of like washing dishes with a piece of a sweater - but the thing will felt over time and be more cloth-like.

Next up: something to keep my mugs from clacking obnoxiously against the glass desktop.


These do very nicely! Insanely fast and easy pattern. You can see a little bit more of the design here:


...though it's still not all that clear.

finishing touches

Today's been a hugely satisfying day as I went shopping for a few little things I've needed for the past week or so to put finishing touches on a number of projects.

First, the hedgehog can see now!


There was a slightly awkward moment when I went to show him off to my landlady's daughter - as soon as I said, 'Hey, look at this!' and perched him on top of her textbooks her eyes lit up and she said, 'Wow, thank you!' Uh, not for her! So I guess I'll be making another one in the near future - actually that's good since I still have a fair bit of that woolly brown yarn left and it's absolutely horrible for anything other than a stuffed critter's body.

He got a name from the landlady's daughters as well. I asked them to come up with a name for him and one girl promptly replied, 'Ah-hen!' which sent all the Taiwanese people present into gales of laughter. Apparently this is an extremely common, very local name in the Taiwanese dialect - I get the impression it's roughly equivalent to Bubba or Jim-Bob in the American South. I figure it's appropriate for him since he is a little Taiwanese guy, after all. Also the second character in the name means 'kindness', and that's what the critter swap is all about. Aw, warm fuzzies.

This bag will be accompanying Ah-Hen on his journey to America.


I originally bought the yarn intending to try my hand at a stuffed unicorn, but when that proved beyond my abilities I made a bag with it and decorated it with a unicorny motif. At first I thought of embroidering or appliquéing a felt unicorn onto it, but that seemed pretty daunting - unicorns are difficult (for me) to even draw freehand without them looking like crap. This little charm came to my rescue:


He was in a basket with wooden elephants, lions, and other African animals so presumably he's meant to be a giraffe, but when, I ask you, did you last see a giraffe with a horn like that? (And the recipient lists giraffes as one of her favourite animals anyway, so presumably a unicorn-giraffe hybrid will go over well....)

Next up, beads for topping off this phone cozy which I absolute, positively, had to make as soon as I saw it:


Of all the incredibly frivolous, colourful doodads! This was my first project using intarsia and it came out basically all right with just a few hiccups, so I'm pretty damn pleased with myself. And now my phone can stay nice and warm in this sweltering climate.

Finally - I mentioned I found a yarn shop in Hong Kong. They had this bright, soft, inexpensive cotton stuff for sale at a great discount and it will be just the thing for making a shoulder strap for a bag I knit a couple of months ago:


And that's all for now. Gods, I wish I had a decent camera!

back from Hong Kong

...and totally beat! The city was lovely though, and I even found a yarn shop practically next door to my hotel :) I'll be back tomorrow with some more pictures of finished projects and works-in-progress.

look, I stuffed it!

I've been working on something kind of like this hedgehog for the bpal.org summer critter swap. All the knitting was out of the way days ago, but the poor guy had to spend a while languishing limply in my desk drawer until I had the spare cash to buy stuffing for him (he was tucked in the desk drawer where I couldn't see him because he was just too depressing in his unstuffed state).

This afternoon I was finally able to go and get some critter stuffing, and now he's looking much better, though he still needs some eyes:


I'm rather pleased with how it turned out! Given that it's, y'know, brown yarn and a not-terribly-detailed elongated shape, I was kind of worried that I'd wind up with something resembling a knit Mr. Hanky, but in the end he's pretty darn hedgehoggy.

I'll post a final glamour shot when I attach his eyes and decide on a name.

chu-ji

All right, so, this was conceived as being more or less a crafty/foody blog. But there isn't any rule that says the food has to be pretty, right? Since I don't have a quality camera or an oven with which to bake adorable hand-decorated cupcakes yet, and also since I didn't make this stuff, my landlady did, I'm going to post it just for the hell of it:


I can imagine the look on my boyfriend's face now. 'You put that in your mouth?!' Yes, and it was a one-way ticket to Yumsville. It's apparently such a typically Taiwanese dish that the landlady's daughter didn't even give me the name of it in standard Mandarin. In Taiwanese dialect it's pronounced more or less like 'chu-ji'.* It contains peanuts, lots of garlic, and also some little things that we're not sure what are in English, but they're tiny, they grow on trees, and they need to be harvested by hand which is a right pain in the ass. The whole shebang is cooked for ages and quite labor-intensive. I'm told it's similar to Japanese natto, which I've heard horror stories about for years. I could happily eat this all the time though!

To enjoy it properly, you keep it in the freezer and add little dabs of it to rice, eggs, noodles, or whatever. It's quite salty and the flavour is too intense for it to be eaten on its own.

*For anyone who's Chinese-enabled, when written out it's the character shu(4) for 'tree' followed by a tz. Not really informative!

passion fruit and published friends

It's been a pleasant weekend for me here, in spite of a lingering sore throat from last week. I'm getting settled in and starting to head out and explore the markets in the area - I've been on the lookout for passion fruit and was overjoyed to find a lot of it at a nearby fruit market, only 5 NT dollars each:


A few nectarines seem to have snuck into the background there as well.

I also turned up a happy surprise while browsing on Facebook: an old friend of mine from college has published a fantasy novel for young adults called Northlander. It looks like it'll be a good read! I'm going to have to check it out, especially since I'm in the privileged position of having read some of her earlier work firsthand. Reminiscing about old favourites of mine from the same genre led me to run a search for titles by Monica Furlong and I was delighted to find that there's an out-of-print sequel to her books Wise Child and Juniper titled Colman. Paperback copies were going for upwards of $70, but I found a hardcover edition for a mere $5.93 and promptly snatched it up.